Trying to track down an old Trek-like game

[kmp]

Hi all.  Back in the late 90s, I found a game on some shareware site or other that was a very in-depth strategy game with detailed starship tactical combat, involving multiple different races each with their own style of spaceships.  I don't remember if the races were explicitly Trek ones or not but I remember it was pretty clear that was the inspiration.  It was not VGA Planets - the display was fairly basic, mostly simple line diagrams and text.  I particularly remember the ship shields were spilt up into four different facings (fore and aft, left and right) and that the colors involved in displaying the ships used lots of green and orange.

I've been digging through all the abandonware sites and can't find anything that fits what I remember.  Like I said, definitely not VGA Planets - I was playing that also around the same time.  If anyone can put me on the right track to identifying or finding this game, I'd really appreciate it.

[kaisernathan1701]

Space Quest series? Wing Commander?

[captainmojo]

Are you talking about the DOS-based "Begin: A Tactical Starship Simulator"?



www.starfleetproject.com/

[kmp]

Begin is sorta kinda like what I remember - it was definitely DOS based and of a similar period - but not quite that in-depth. I'm pretty sure it was a turn-based game.

[steve]

You may want to consider listing the games that you've already seen and rejected as the one that you are looking for. That way, it will help other people search for the game that you wish to find and not clutter this thread with recommendations that you have already rejected.

[kmp]

Ok, here goes:

Alien Legacy
Iron Seed
Star Fleet 1: War Begins / Star Fleet 2: Krellan Commander (similar look in some ways)
Rules of Engagement (which I had never heard of until I started this search; it's good but not what I'm looking for)
EGA Trek (I still have the original copyright-violating version of this, it's fun but it's like 5% as deep as the thing I'm looking for)
All the Trek adventure games, which are what tend to come up when you look for "Trek DOS games" - 25th Anniversary, Promethean Prophecy, Kobayashi Initiative, Final Unity - what I'm remembering was definitely a strategy game, not a story game
Anacreon: Reconstruction 4021 (same basic idea but far more primitive and clunky than what I remember)
Reach for the Stars
Armada 2525
VGA Planets (this is the closest but like I said it's definitely something different)
Space Empires IV (windows)
Multiwar
Mission Critical
Crusade In Space (very close, except that it's Win3.1 only, real-time, and lots of blue/red instead of green/orange)
Galactic Encounters
Frontier / Elite / Wing Commander / all the cockpit games - this was a top-down 2D strategy game
Imperial Space Command
Master of Orion
Space Conquest
Space Guardian
Stellar Conquest
Trek
Begin

Hope that narrows it down a bit.

[steve]

Here's a quick list of possible (but not likely) candidates:

Fleet: Tactical Combat Simulator
OpenTrek
Star Control 2: Ur-Quan Masters
Star Lords
Stelcon 2469
Stellar Conquest 3: Hostile Takeover
Stellar Explorer
Turbo Trek
Visual Star Trek (VTrek)

Also, you may want to consider alphabetizing your list so that people can more quickly discover whether or not a game that they discovered matches a game that you have already examined and dismissed.

Finally, here's a website of a lot of Star Trek (and pseudo-Star Trek) games:

www.gaming.trekcore.com/chrono_list.html